AZIONARIATO DEL LAVORO. — This is one of the correctives to the wage system, whereby workers and employees obtain ordinary or special shares in the same enterprise in which they work.
The idea of labor shareholding arose from the need to eliminate the disadvantages of a simple wage agreement, among them the failure to proportion the worker’s remuneration to the conditions of the enterprise and, above all, the failure to establish a bond of deeply felt solidarity between the two factors of production: capital and labor. It was sought to remedy this deficiency through profit-sharing, but this system has not always produced the results hoped for; moreover, it does not make the worker a true partner in the enterprise, and therefore makes it difficult for him to become jointly interested in the prosperity and fortunes of the productive organization of which he forms part. For there to be a solid union among the participants in the economic process, they must all own the instruments of production. Profit-sharing alone does not constitute a partnership, because it does not create a juridical person distinct from that of the contracting parties. It was therefore thought necessary to supplement and perfect participation through labor shareholding. This institution, without overturning the wage system, satisfies the principal requirements of the partnership regime and gathers its advantages. Through labor shareholding, in fact, the worker receives the share of the profits due to him in the form of shares, with which he acquires the same rights as those attached to capital shares: namely, participation in dividends, a deliberative voice in the company’s general meetings, and representation on the board of directors.
Labor shareholding may be individual or collective; in the first case, the holder of the shares is the individual worker; in the second, the holder is an organization representing an aggregate of workers. If this aggregate is a trade union, the labor shareholding is called trade-union shareholding. Labor shares may derive not only from profits, but also from particular savings made by the worker, or from a simple gratuitous grant by the employer.
Not long ago, labor shareholding was promoted by Christian social thinkers as one of the most effective means for the harmonious composition of the classes and the attainment of industrial peace. It is well known how Mons. Pottier, the distinguished Belgian sociologist, advocated it through his writings and his social activity. Today, after a quarter of a century, Pottier’s optimistic predictions regarding labor shareholding have not been entirely fulfilled. This is not meant to depreciate the system, as though it were utopian: the confidence placed in it may have been excessive, but it was certainly not unfounded. “It would therefore be deplorable,” Neil-Breuning wisely observes, “if the conception of labor shareholding were to be entirely abandoned on the grounds that not all the hopes placed in it have been fulfilled. Expectations must be restricted to the limits of what is possible, and then the paths to success must be resolutely sought” (Die soziale Enzyklika, Cologne 1932, p. 113).
Obviously, labor shareholding is not a panacea, but if, in enterprises where it can be applied—that is, in enterprises of a capitalist character—it is adopted with fairness and wisdom, it cannot fail to contribute to the advancement of the worker and to the improvement of relations between capital and labor. It is certain that thus far it has had some success here and there, such as a reduction in strikes, an increase in output, and staff stability.
Of the two forms of labor shareholding, the individual is the one that best meets the worker’s psychological needs, insofar as it stimulates his personal interest and constitutes a concrete sign of the increased regard in which he is held within the enterprise. There is no doubt that this institution accords perfectly with the Church’s social directives. It is enough to recall what Pius XI suggests in Quadragesimo anno, when he discusses the wage system. “In the present social conditions,” he says, “we deem it more prudent that, insofar as possible, the contract of employment should be somewhat tempered by a partnership contract, as has already begun to be done in various ways, with no little advantage to the workers themselves and to the employers. Thus workers become jointly interested both in ownership and in administration, and participate, to a certain extent, in the profits received” (no. 30).
Angelo Bruceleri
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